Category: ebay

And yes, it is hot out. Likely to be humid too. And sunny. Because it’s summer. I was reading my rural electricity co-op provider’s magazine while at the BOL, and had grabbed one out of the stack from LAST summer. Guess what it said? Yeah, conserve electricity because of the high heat. Also they were raising our rates because of inflation. So this year is pretty much just like last year. Hot.

Somehow we forget. Like the pain of childbirth.

Despite the heat I ran a couple of loads to my local auction house. Picked up one lot I’d won in a more industrial auction. That was for resale. I will try to run at least one more good load to the auction today before heading over to my rent house to start work on it. The ceiling needs repair. I’m going to end up doing the patch in the wall, instead of the painter… and the porch floor has some rotten boards that will need to be replaced. I have to do that every couple of years.

Then I have to seriously consider what to do about the fence. Some of it is pretty worn, as I discovered when the strange neighbor drew my attention to it. I’m tempted to do the absolute minimum, just add a board so I can re-nail the rotten bottoms of the pickets. That will buy a couple of more years for the fence. I don’t want to put thousands or even hundreds of dollars into it. I’ve power washed it a couple of times though, and it’s pretty worn out. Western red cedar 5 inch pickets on pressure treated posts and rails is the default fencing here, and it holds up pretty well, better with washing and sealing, but it doesn’t last forever and that fence is over 15 years old. The joy of property ownership. It’ll be hot out, no matter what I choose to do.

I do think that having a revenue stream from a rental property is a good idea, and a decent hedge against inflation. As long as you can count on .gov to honor property rights, and insist that tenants pay you what you are owed, that is. We’ve seen that we can’t actually count on that in most places. Still a good investment in theory, and for us, in practice. I’d prefer to have some commercial rental property too. It’s easier to get rid of bad tenants, but if the economy goes south, it’s harder to keep good ones. Everyone needs a place to live, businesses can condense down to ‘home based’ if needed, or they go broke completely leaving commercial landlords with empty properties. Every investment involves trade offs, and different risks.

Even cash buried in jars involves risk.

The only way I know to reduce the risk is to diversify, and I don’t mean by holding 10 different stocks. Diversify your investments. Diversify your income. Diversify your suppliers and sources. Diversify what you stack. And hope that the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down all at the same time.

Even if it does, if you’ve stacked, you’ll still be able to eat. Stack it up.

nick

Cool, but warming.   We are supposed to get warmer through the week, and into the 80s.   National forecast has us clear today and rainy tomorrow.   There were very scattered and light spattering showers yesterday as we were on the edge of a rainy zone.

I spent time with a friend yesterday, and actually went thrifting.   He got some good stuff and so did I.  We had some time to talk too.  Then I spent some time sorting.

Today I’ll do more sorting, a couple of pickups, and I should be able to drop off stuff for one of the local auctions too.

Speaking of which, a commentor asked some questions last night and as I was writing the answers, it grew to post size.  I decided to put it here today.

So, some answers and thoughts about reselling, based on my more recent experiences.

@nick, when you bring items to one of your local auctioneers, do you have any input as to the starting bid? And what percentage of the winning bid do you wind up with if you don’t mind sharing? I have a few bins of ~$20-$30 items that I should be listing on eBay but never quite get a ‘round tuit’.

WRT starting bids at my auctioneer, he doesn’t like them to be too high. Buyers like to start low, even if it ends up high. I can insist on a minimum, but again he doesn’t like it (he has to manually manage the process). It comes down to you have to trust the buyers (and have enough of them.) For my side, it means curating what I bring him to be things I think his buyers will like, and accepting that something might go cheap. On the gripping hand, if no one ever got a bargain, they wouldn’t keep coming back, so the occasional item that goes too cheap is really an investment in the future.

WRT costs, my two favorite auctioneers take between 30 and 40% of the hammer price, plus they get a “buyer’s premium” on top of that paid by the buyer, not me. The actual percentage they take depends on my negotiating skill, and the quality of the stuff I bring them. Their labor is pretty much the same for a $10 item as a $100 item, so they prefer the bigger items. That said, the majority of their items seem to be $10-$40 sale price, with some higher, some lower. I shoot for $20-$50, with the occasional $100 item, and am sometimes surprised, and sometimes disappointed.

The upshot of selling at auction is that you ‘make your money’ when you BUY the item. It has to be REALLY CHEAP relative to the price you expect. That way you are covered if it sells at the low opening bid. If you pay too much, it’ll never sell at auction with a starting bid high enough to cover your breakeven.

There are lots of pricing strategies, lots of different ways to approach profit margin. If you are listing on ebay with a ‘buy it now’ you have more control over the price, but you will never have a surprise hit, like I did with an antique book. I’d have been happy to get $20, but it sold for $400.

I watch youtubers that will pay up to half the expected sale price for inventory. That’s nuts. You lose a third to ebay/paypal, shipping might eat into the profit, and you have time involved in packing and shipping. Plus if the item is a slow mover, because you’ve priced it at the upper end of the range, your money is tied up, you have to store and manage the item, and you might take an offer for lower, just to move the item. It’s easy to end up breaking even on a low cost item, or even losing money just to make the sale. And that is before counting your time, or the income tax.

There are exceptions. If you have a lot of identical items, and they are very easy to ship, you can either list them with a “select a quantity”  and sell singles or multiples over time, or you can lot them in multi-item lots so you have one sale of 4 or 6 and your margin on that one sale is high enough to be worth it.

Listing and Shipping (packing) are the biggest time sinks for me. Taking the stuff to my local guy saves me both of those costs.

Testing/fixing/cleaning can eat up a lot of time too, so I tend to put it off, and then do it in batches.

I plan to restart listing on ebay but only for items that will sell for $50 or more.   I’ll let my kids list the cheap stuff, and fulfill those orders too.  (yeah I’ll still be doing the work, but they’ll be learning the skills and hopefully my involvement will diminish over time.)    I was going to set my personal limit at $100 but decided I’ve got a lot of items with good profit potential at $50 that I might as well sell.   And I’ll only list items that I am sure won’t sell well in one of the local auctions because the pool of buyers is too small, or to geographically dispersed.

I should also mention that I got all the low priced inventory because for a while, people were only buying “smalls” for around $20.  My big stuff wasn’t moving and I needed stuff that was.   My  priorities have changed though, so it makes sense for me to concentrate on moving up the food chain a bit, and to not spend my time ‘grinding’.

Other people will make other choices based on their own calculations, or their emotions, or by reading sheep’s entrails, but I’m going to try it this way for a while.

I’m hoping to reduce my inventory, and increase my stacks…

Because stacking is good, if the stuff is good.

nick

Cool and damp.   That time of year.  Winter, I think you call it up north.  60F when I went to bed so ‘cool’ not ‘cold.’  It turned into a very nice day yesterday and I’m hoping for the same today.

Got my trailer rental returned.   They had the wrong trailer assigned to me, and that one got returned on time, which left me with a completed reservation, and nothing to turn in.    They got it straightened out.  Didn’t take long.

Hit  the Goodwill on my way home and witnessed a full on scrum over some comic books.   They ended up wrinkling and ripping them as they fought to grab as many as they could.   Savages.   What value there might have been was lost in the fighting.   The one I spot checked was only 99c plus shipping, and after witnessing the fight, the cashiers were not inclined to discounts, so the comics would have been 3/99c.   Not much profit at that rate.   There might have been some valuable books in there, but I didn’t join in.    I did swoop in afterward and pick up a board game that is selling for $65 – 75 and a SCSI adapter in the box that should sell for about the same, maybe a bit less.   I’ll let them fight over pennies.

Came home and did some ‘domestic bliss’ stuff around the house.   More of that today and maybe some plumbing…  or head to my storage unit to take advantage of the clear weather.

Sold one of the freezers to my fisherman buddy.    That leaves the two with more damage to be sold.  Maybe I’ll pick those up today.  Or maybe I’ll do vehicle maintenance.   Or not.   We’ll see.  I’ve got to do a Costco run too.  A whole bunch of stuff I buy is on sale this month so it’s time to add to the stacks.

Had a good conversation with D1 about how the media lies, how they have been lying, and how to look at an article and a picture critically.     She also expressed some concern that with all the illegal invaders, maybe white people (us in particular) would get forced out, or made into the slaves this time around.   I told her that even if we had to die surrounded by piles of spent brass we’d never be slaves.  And to watch for them seizing the guns, because they take the guns when they want to do something to you that you would shoot them for trying…

Conversations are getting interesting.

Stack it high, sporty times will be very difficult to avoid.

nick

Cold and wet.   It was 50F and dropping when I went to sleep.   Wed had the temp falling all day, with only a brief time when the sky was blue and the temp was stable.   But when the sky cleared, it was a beautiful day.

Took three bins of ‘smalls’ to my auctioneer.  Picked up my check and empty bins.   Missed the chance to get in the last auction before Christmas.   That’s unfortunate, but I knew it was likely last week.  Made some money on most of the stuff I sold.   Some lost a bit.  Some made good money.   Which is all normal.  There is no way to predict what will sell in any given auction, or how much it will sell for.  The biggest return was selling a bag of vintage Fisher Price “Little People” toys.   The gallon bag of figures and accessories went for $30 and it wasn’t even very full.  All of it went for less than ebay, but that’s normal too.

Today I am trying to get to my client’s house for a few hours.   I’ve got to sort out the port forwarding for the cameras, replace the burned up PoE switch,  and see what I got wrong setting up  the VPN access.  If I have time, I need to install the cell booster repeater too.

My sibling is in town for work this week and we have a tentative dinner date tonight.   S/he brought some gifts, and I’ve got birthday gifts for him/her.  I don’t think we have Christmas gifts ready to send back with her/him.  Time is marching on, but other stuff keeps moving to the front of the line.

This is a time to be strengthening relationships, not taking them for granted.

And for stacking up memories of the good times.

Stack stuff if you can’t stack memories, but definitely take the time to stack memories…

nick